I read the article headed Slaughtered (The Argus, September 24). The picture showed wild rabbits that would have been shot with a .22 calibre rifle, not an air rifle.

As it is illegal to rehome wild animals, Debbie Campain should really get her facts right before making ridiculous statements.

She seems to be of the opinion that those responsible for the dead rabbits may have been breeders who had too many to care for and there was no need to cull them.

This is ignorance on her part. Rabbit breeders do not breed wild rabbits.

The wild rabbit population is numerous and a nuisance to farmers as they destroy crops.

Farmers allow "lampers" on to their land to shoot rabbits in order to keep the numbers down.

It would not be unusual, on some farms, to shoot two or three hundred in one evening.

Even so, we are still overrun with them.

Many of the rabbits suffer from myxomatosis and suffer slow, painful death.

Shooting them saves them from this. Shot rabbits are usually taken to a butcher and, if they are suitable, prepared for sale.

It was unfortunate these rabbits were left by the roadside. This should not have happened and there is no excuse for it. I can only think they were left there to be collected later or were shot by poachers or inexperienced lampers.

Lamping of wild rabbits and foxes goes on all over the country and, as highlighted by the three recent shootings of innocent people by careless lampers, has Tony Blair, in his haste to ban fox hunting, left us with the safest or kindest form of control?

A misplaced bullet at night in the beam of a lamp and Charlie suffers a long, lingering death.

-Louise Scott, Worthing